After Bush re-election: German Greens shift further to the right

After Bush re-election: German Greens shift further to the right
By Peter Schwarz
20 November 2004

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/grns-n20.shtml

The German Greens have reacted to George W. Bush’s re-election as US president with a clear shift to the right. Reinhard Bütikofer, co-chair of the Green Party, spelled this out in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau on the lessons of the US election.

“The left,” Bütikofer stated, is “well advised to study how the hegemony of the conservatives in the US has been strengthened with populist cultural agitation.” He firmly opposed reacting to “Bush’s cultural populism with economic populism,” as proposed by “part of the left in the US.” When the Rundschau insisted: “You mean: to promise jobs in a populist fashion?” Bütikofer replied, “Yes, and to denounce the rich.”

It remains unclear what Bütikofer means by “the left in the US”—his description is hardly applicable to the Democrats and the US Green Party. His message is nonetheless clear: the conclusion Democrats should draw from the election is to not focus politics on social issues—such as unemployment, the growth of poverty at one pole of society and the accumulation of obscene levels of wealth at the other...<snip>

I've always said that their name was so ambiguous that it could easily be taken over and turned into something that most folks didn't think it was.

The Greens have not been an especially "left" party for some time noe; their agenda is more in line with the European Liberals (not to be confused with US liberals).
However the WSWS has really turned into a laughingstock in the past four years.

Anti-establishment agitator, leftist, environmentalist, yuppie, contented middle class, and now God and Family nationalist.